Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Fin-Est Connection (Spontaneous Finnish Humanitarian Aid as Catalyst for Independent Estonia: From a Personal Touch to the Success of a Nation)
Période du rapport: 2024-01-08 au 2026-01-07
The goal of the project was to investigate the effect of person-to-person connections and cross-border communication in times of geopolitical tensions. The case study at the heart of the research was the relationship between Estonians and Finns during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when these linguistically and culturally similar nations were separated by the Iron Curtain. Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union and because of the precarious nature of the Soviet economy, there was a deficit of food and other necessities. Neighboring Finns were not a part of the Soviet Union and their economy was thriving. Many Finns decided to take matters into their own hands and start personally delivering aid to Estonians.
Over the years large amounts of food, clothes, toys, medicine, technology and other items were delivered from Finland to Soviet Estonia by vast informal person-to-person networks. This spontaneous humanitarian aid helped families in Estonia not only to survive, but also thrive in the precarious economic environment of late-socialism. Moreover, some of these ventures grew into more formal connections as well as business collaborations later on, after Estonia had re-established its independence in 1991.
Thus, the cross-border communication brought with it not just material goods, but also immaterial benefits, such as entrepreneurial and political ideas. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the newly reinstated budding Republic of Estonia quickly found its way towards a path of reconstruction and democracy, and has enjoyed outstanding socio-economic success among its peers ever since. Compared to other former Soviet states, Estonia ranks highly in many areas, such as economic freedom, low corruption, scientific impact and education.
These developments can seem surprising, but once the effect of years worth of Finnish aid, grass-root level international relations and diplomacy of the people are accounted for, a new aspect of reality opens up: one, that can be utilized not just as a fascinating retrospective, but that might also potentially be sourced for recipes in global development work to combat inequality, poverty and corruption on a larger scale.
Over the years large amounts of food, clothes, toys, medicine, technology and other items were delivered from Finland to Soviet Estonia by vast informal person-to-person networks. This spontaneous humanitarian aid helped families in Estonia not only to survive, but also thrive in the precarious economic environment of late-socialism. Moreover, some of these ventures grew into more formal connections as well as business collaborations later on, after Estonia had re-established its independence in 1991.
Thus, the cross-border communication brought with it not just material goods, but also immaterial benefits, such as entrepreneurial and political ideas. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the newly reinstated budding Republic of Estonia quickly found its way towards a path of reconstruction and democracy, and has enjoyed outstanding socio-economic success among its peers ever since. Compared to other former Soviet states, Estonia ranks highly in many areas, such as economic freedom, low corruption, scientific impact and education.
These developments can seem surprising, but once the effect of years worth of Finnish aid, grass-root level international relations and diplomacy of the people are accounted for, a new aspect of reality opens up: one, that can be utilized not just as a fascinating retrospective, but that might also potentially be sourced for recipes in global development work to combat inequality, poverty and corruption on a larger scale.
In order to reach the heart of the historical phenomenon described, the research focused on the personal motivations of people involved in the informal exchange between Estonians and Finns in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The fellow conducted individual oral history interviews and group discussions with relevant parties in both Estonia and Finland to grasp the multitude of ways citizen's personal choices are understood to have shaped the lives of individuals as well as communities. The oral history accounts were juxtaposed with archival data from Estonian and Finnish archives. For general context, Estonian, Finnish and international newspapers and journals were also utilized for providing context. One of the special characteristics of the project was the interrelatedness of research activities with communication and dissemination via traveling exhibition, radio series and public speaking engagements. These formed a circle and fed each other throughout the duration of the project.
The long history of the relationship between Estonians and Finns has thus far mainly been researched from either political, cultural, or linguistic perspectives, and the re-independence of Estonia has been investigated either via a distinctly political and legal viewpoint, as a stage for the Singing Revolution, or as a facet of the wider international developments in the Baltics. The current MSCA project went beyond the state of the art by unearthing the untold history of grass-root experience in cross-border communication between Estonians and Finns. The level of detail and scale, as well as multitude of perspectives (including for example also the realm of sensory history) exposed the phenomenon in a new light and will lend new insights into regional history as well as the origin of current geopolitical realities. Reinterpreting the European Cold War through the lens of spontaneous voluntary humanitarian aid enabled to examine hidden, silenced and under-researched networks as well as grasp at the socio-economic implications of the exchange.